Changing sprites with animations

So I have a question I'm trying to figure this out for a few days but can't seem to find the right answer. Lets say I have a character with rigidbody and colliders and an animator (2D) that has a few animations and the character is moving from left to right and teleporting back to the left side of the screen and whenever he does that I want it to change to another similar character that would need the same rigidbody and colliders and animations the only thing that it would have is a different appearance. What is the best way to do this? Create 2 or 3 game object similar to the first one and then somehow change which one is showing? How would I do that ?